


Cry for the Lost, Smile for the Living

by downdeepinside



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Funerals, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of suicide (for a case)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 01:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downdeepinside/pseuds/downdeepinside
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The death of someone close to him leaves Sherlock relying on his friends a little more than usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cry for the Lost, Smile for the Living

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by a song by Passenger called 'Life's for the Living'.
> 
> It takes a lot to make me cry, yet I have to admit to crying while writing this.
> 
> Once again this is unbeta'd and it's actually being posted very late on in the evening, so if you see a mistake and point it out I'd be most grateful.

_Where were you when it happened?_

In 2012, as part of London’s advertising scheme to promote the Olympics, the government put these irritating segments on the telly every now and again. Clips of ‘great events in history’, such as the Berlin Wall being torn down, would be displayed with block red writing reading, ‘Where were you when it happened?’.

Sherlock isn’t sure why the advert springs to mind right now.

If you were to ask him where he had been when it happened, he’d be able to tell you. For instance: The moment the incident happened he’d been at a crime scene on the Southbank of the River Thames; the minute the doctors stopped their efforts to counter-act the consequent events of the incident he had been in a cab, returning from the former crime scene (which had, in fact, turned out to be a boring suicide); the instant he first suspected what had happened he was standing on the step to 221, about to enter the building; the second he knew he was standing just outside Mrs Hudson’s door.

He’s never much liked funerals.

It’s universally accepted that funerals are not supposed to be an enjoyable event, but instead a serious day during which people mourn, grieve, cry, weep, moan, and maybe celebrate the life of the deceased. A popular fiction writer recently stated that funerals were for the living (some John Green, who wrote a book that Lestrade’s daughter read, that Lestrade then glanced at after it made her sob for weeks, that Lestrade then mentioned to John while Sherlock was present). While the writer couldn’t really be disputed, it did cause one consulting detective to ponder why all funerals were events one would much rather be dead for, if they were in actuality designed for the living.

The sleek black limo Sherlock sits in starts to slow down and it occurs to him his thoughts have, once again, wandered. He turns to John, who loyally sits by his side, and half expects to be told off. John just stairs ahead solemnly and barley bats and eyelid as the doors are opened.

***

Sherlock takes one look at the body and inwardly groans. The supposed signs of struggle that have caused the idiots at Scotland Yard to class the death as suspicious are clearly self-inflicted by someone who decided to take their own life then changed their mind, and the lack of anything to weigh down someone trying to drown themselves is easily explained away by the strong evening tides and the lack of any kind of jacket on the victim, who had supposedly been out for a walk alone around midnight in March. He debates simply snapping at Lestrade and then jumping in the next cab and going home to his warm flat with cosy John who might just (if he’s in a good mood) make him a cup of tea that perfect way John always does. This plan is quickly scuppered when he realises the man is nowhere in sight, and instead the only member of the force he recognises is one Sally Donovan, who eyes him critically. He kneels down near the corpse and does his best to act as if he’s investigating. What are the chances of forensics letting him steal a few fingers or toes from this body?

It takes seven minutes and fifteen seconds for Lestrade to appear, dark bags under his eyes and a seven shot coffee in hand. Any other man might decide to be lenient to the obviously exhausted detective inspector; Sherlock Holmes is not any other man.

“Ah, Lestrade, so glad you decided to show up. First of all to class this scene as a _seven_ is absolute insanity – secondly, the clues I noticed within moment of stepping on the scene have caused me to question just what it is they teach you,”

Lestrade held up a hand, took a large gulp of coffee, and shook his head, “Sherlock, please. No showing off, just tell us what we need to know.”

Sherlock most definitely does not pout like a three year old toddler before sighing and shoving his hands in his pockets, “This was a suicide, as you will discover if you look close enough.”

The inspector blinked, as if expecting more, but Sherlock merely raised his eyebrows. “Alright, alright. I’ll get the team on it – you can go home before your bollocks freeze off.”

Sherlock doesn’t deign the comment with a response, instead turning on his heel and trudging up the bank to hail a cab. Nearly eleven minutes of his day wasted at a crime-less crime scene; horrifying.

***

Sherlock’s phone had buzzed three times while he was at the crime scene, but since Mycroft had a new case he was desperate to get Sherlock involved with the detective had ignored it. Once stuck in the stuffy cab in typical London traffic he decides to pull it out and, to his surprise, finds all three texts were from John (who just recently had given Sherlock a lecture on excessive unnecessary texting).

_Could you pick up some milk on the way back? –JW_

Sherlock snorts, debating which excuse he should use today for his lack of dairy.

_Not-Anthea’s here, Mycroft must be desperate. Hurry home. –JW_

He grins, John apparently having provided his excuse for him.

_Get home now. –JW_

Sherlock frowns.

***

Still crowds have never really been Sherlock’s thing. He’s fine in the busy streets of London, where large crowds of people mill from corner to corner of the city, but at family gatherings or anything akin to that he starts to feel uncomfortable. It’s less easy to blend in yet at the same time it’s not quite intimate enough to stand out properly; instead you sort of stagnate in an uncomfortable limbo.

He’s feeling that right now.

After exiting the limo (John getting out first and waiting for a long moment before reaching in, gently pulling Sherlock’s hand, and leading the man out of the car) the two companions had joined a large group of posh twats in suits and blank-face women in black dresses. Sherlock’s hand mourns John’s in his own even though he knows the notions is ridiculous, since how can a hand mourn another it knew only for a brief second? Hands can’t mourn. It’s people that mourn, well their minds. Once Sherlock had said it was only ordinary people that mourn but now he feels he must have been wrong, because he’s mourning right now. At least, if this isn’t mourning, it’s death.

He hadn’t felt like this at his parents’ funeral; though he was only six at the time. Mycroft had cried, secretly in the toilets, but Sherlock had spent the whole day reading a book about the solar system and as soon as the main service had ended he’d left to climb the tallest tree he could find. When he fell and broke his arm Mycroft only sighed, and after a night at the hospital the two boys went to their new home in France with Aunt Liz. The most they ever saw of the house was two weeks at Christmas – much of the year was spent in exile at boarding school.

The crowd starts to move after a funeral director, looking far too cheerful for the day’s events, dashes out and flicks a key in the lock.

Mycroft should have him fired, he thinks.

He sighs.

***

When the cab stops at 219 Baker Street Sherlock gets out, somewhat irritated. He throws some Jordanian dinar at the cab driver as thanks for taking almost an hour to drive a fifteen minute route and then finishing with a grand finale of the wrong address. He makes it to the door and pulls out his key, jumping up on the step to avoid a mass delivery entering Speedy’s. He pushes the key into the lock and freezes.

Something feels odd. It’s felt like this before.

Complete silence rings out from the entire of 221B, no kettle whistling, no TV or radio blaring, and no one’s talking. John had said he’d pop down to see Mrs Hudson while Sherlock was out, and even if he’d left to see Anthea the two would be up in 221B and John would at least attempt to make some sort of stilted small talk. Even stranger than the apparent lack of activity is the fact that John sent his text announcing Anthea sixty eight minutes ago, yet the woman is apparently yet to leave (a small black car is parked just across the road and Sherlock recognises it all too well).

A number of hypothesise begin to form but Sherlock ignores them all in favour of opening the door. The click and creek of the door as he pushes it open is a loud knife through the silence of 221 and John almost immediately appears at the top of the stairs to 221B. One glance at his face confirms what Sherlock had already suspected.

“No,”

The word barely registers as Sherlock’s head fills with thick and confusing white noise. He doesn’t notice John flying down the seventeen steps but the firm hand on his shoulder is suddenly a tether keeping him from vanishing.

“Sherlock,”

“No no no no no no n-”

“Sherlock I’m sor-”

“Fat git.”

John seems taken aback, and the mystery of the missing Mrs Hudson is solved when he hears a muffled cry from upstairs.

Sherlock pulls in a breath and looks in John’s direction, though his eyes aren’t really seeing anything right now. Not that he’s crying, mind, simply his brain seems to have frozen and all the signals are cutting out. “When? How? Why?”

John straightens his back, because _this_ is his area – being there for Sherlock when he needs answers. “He had been flying in his private plane, business somewhere in Scotland, when it went into stall and the pilot was unable to correct the angle. The plane crashed onto a thankfully abandoned area of land and the pilot and two passengers died instantly. It was just over an hour ago, according to Anthea who came over to inform you minutes after finding out herself.”

Sherlock nods because it seems like the right thing to do, then frowns, “Why?” he repeats, because he realises this hasn’t been answered. John comes into view and the doctor is swallowing reflexively, something he does when he doesn’t want to cry at a soppy episode of Doctor Who. Sherlock says it louder this time, “Why?”

“Sherlock,”

“My _brother_ John. Mycroft’s actually – why?”

John looks as if he’s in severe pain and Sherlock shakes his head and drops the keys he’d been holding back into his coat pocket, “I’m going for a walk.”

***

Traditionally the deceased’s family sit on one side while their friends sit on the other, but since Mycroft’s family is limited to Sherlock and a few cousins who live far away and couldn’t make it the seats are pretty much a free-for-all. By some unspoken agreement it seems to have been decided that all work acquaintances sit on the right hand side while everyone else sits on the left, and while Sherlock notes there are considerably less people on the left hand side he finds little significance in this fact.

Sherlock is at the front of the left hand side, John to the right of him and Lestrade to the left. The funeral director starts with a joke and Sherlock swears he could kill him.

“Do I have to do this?”

Molly sits down besides John, although she never met Mycroft. His three minders share a look and Sherlock shuffles down in his seat a little like a guilty child.

The director starts to talk about Mycroft as if the two had been well acquainted and Sherlock closes his eyes, thinking about the first funeral he ever attended and wondering if he’s too old to climb trees.

***

Sherlock heads straight towards Regent’s Park because he hadn’t had enough time in the space of leaving the flat and turning left to really think about where he could go. It’s around nine in the morning so most kids are in school, leaving the park empty bar a few toddlers and babies out for walks with their parents. He notices two brothers walking hand in hand and winces. John’s footsteps are heavy behind him and occasionally the army doctor calls his name, but Sherlock doesn’t stop. He hopes John notices the fact he doesn’t speed up, either, and knows not to give up and leave.

Eventually Sherlock hits a bench in a fairly secluded area and he sits down on it, keeping his back firmly straight. John sits down next to him after a few moments and the man’s heavy breathing suggests Sherlock might have been walking a little faster than he originally thought.

“I’m not going to cry.”

John’s huffs turn into laughter and he shakes his head, “No? Alright, then. Do you mind if I do, because us army doctors are pretty damn emotional? Honestly, it’s like working with a bunch of teenage girls that just watched Les Mis for the first time.”

Sherlock crinkles his nose and John’s grin slips, “Sorry,” he debates asking the obvious question but decides against it, instead opting to silently watch Sherlock as if afraid _he_ might suddenly fall 2,000 feet to his death in a PC12.

“I expect the wonderful Anthea already has plans for the funeral underway?”

John pinches the bridge of his nose; he’d been both disgusted and entirely unsurprised when Anthea mentioned the plans for the funeral on Wednesday. Of course Mycroft Holmes would always be efficient, even in death. “All you have to do is sit there for a few hours; though you might want to say something.”

“Okay.”

John tried not to let his surprise show but Sherlock still notices it, of course, and he sighs, “No doubt some funeral director will rant on about how wonderful he is. I think it’s important we stay focused and remember he was a fat git on the inside.”

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock smirks, but his lip trembles with the effort and his face falls blank immediately. “I’m joking, of course.”

John nods and the two men sit until the park fills with local office workers on their lunch break. Sherlock tells John quietly he’d like to leave and so they do. Sherlock, true to his word, doesn’t cry, and John, true to his, does a little.

***

Sherlock is called to the front of the room and he immediately starts to regret his decision to say anything. He debates simply shrinking down further in his chair until the ground swallows (or absorbs) him whole so that he can disappear in the magma chambers below the Earth’s crust and never be seen again. He stands up and walks to the front mechanically.

He wishes he’d thought to prepare something.

He stands behind a podium which reminds him of Mycroft because the man was practically the Prime Minister and they stand behind a lot of podiums to give speeches. He looks out the crowd of suits and dresses and they remind him of Mycroft because the man bloody _slept_ in a suit. He glances over at John and his blogger gives a watery smile that is most probably meant to be reassuring and Sherlock’s brain hits a wall because when Sherlock was seven he’d played a concert at school, the youngest to play, and Mycroft had surprised him by turning up, and when all the other students had looked out to their parents Sherlock had looked out to a sea of unfamiliar faces before noticing his brother and his brother had given him a bittersweet sort of smile that made Sherlock’s heart sour.

Sherlock closes his eyes and focuses on breathing because he hasn’t cried in the three days since it all started and he isn’t about to start now.

“My brother, from an early age, taught me that caring was not an advantage. That people were... messy and to be avoided,” Sherlock is staring at his hands, which are spread on the podium. His old public speaking teacher would recoil in disgust but this just seems right, “It’s a pity he was about as good at following his own advice as he was at legwork.”

Sherlock is vaguely aware he just followed after the repulsive funeral director’s footsteps and opened with a joke but a few people chuckle and funerals are for the living, so what the hell.

***

Once the service is over people filter out of the building and into cars, where they’ll then head to the wake to stand around and eat cheese sandwiches in a stuffy celebration of Sherlock Holmes’ only brother’s life.

His only brother’s life.

Jesus.

Oh god, not here. Not while he’s shaking people’s hands and smiling and pretending their words mean anything to him.

Escape: He needs to escape.

***

John is standing discretely behind a pillar, watching Sherlock shake various people’s hands as they offer their condolences. He’s aware Sherlock’s most probably in hell, but after three days straight of practically breathing air for the man John feels he needs to force himself to give the poor bloke a little space.  

A little old lady shakes Sherlock’s hand and Sherlock plasters a polite smile on his otherwise blank face. Then, suddenly, something flickers in his eyes, and almost immediately John is on high-alert. A young man steps up to Sherlock but he holds up a hand, gives a small shake of his head, and turns away.

John runs after a fleeing Sherlock and almost crashes into the man as he stops abruptly before a stretch of river and drops to the floor, burying his head in his hands.

“Go away, John.”

The army doctor finds himself frozen as what he’s been waiting for for three days finally happens, and Sherlock’s shoulders tremble as his steady breaths turn into quiet sobs. He finds himself at a complete loss.

“Please, John.”

John’s feet automatically turn away and he even considers leaving for a moment, before his knees argue and he drops to the floor besides Sherlock. Sherlock forces his entire body to still for a moment and he is somewhat reminiscent of a child awaiting its punishment. John reaches his arm out without thinking and wraps it around Sherlock’s shoulders, which immediately start quaking again.

“I don’t-” Sherlock breaks off and shakes his head, slowly looking up and out at the river while palming his wet eyes. “It’s-” he huffs and hides his face again, “This is just _it_.”

John whispers, “I know,” and wraps his other arm around Sherlock, pulling the man in for a hug and rocking the pliant detective back and forth, not really minding the snot and tears dampening the front of his shirt.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are very much appreciated :-)


End file.
